HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW 2010 - Entertainment Weekly

Highlights from ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’s November 19, 2010 issue

(on newsstands nationwide Friday, November 12):

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’S

HOLIDAY MOVIE PREVIEW 2010

Colin Firth in The King’s Speech

Apparently, being Colin Firth these days means being the most popular guy in the room. The veteran British actor is following up his Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s A Single Man with another career-capping achievement, this time in The King’s Speech (rated R, out Nov. 26). In the comedic drama, Firth plays King George VI, the 20th-century British monarch (and father of the current Queen Elizabeth) who was plagued with a crippling stutter until he sought the help of an eccentric Australian speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush).

Firth’s performance has already received such acclaim that he is destined to earn back-to-back Best Actor nominations, a feat accomplished in the past decade by only Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp. Now 50, the man best known as a heartthrob from such projects as the 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice and two Bridget Jones movies is continuing to turn in the most complex work of his 25- year film career. “The stories about men my age are rather interesting. They have a past. Maybe I’ve been given an opportunity which has perhaps invited me to raise my game.”

To prepare for The King’s Speech, Firth pored over archival video footage of George VI (informally known as “Bertie”) delivering painfully awkward public addresses to crowds as big as

100,000. “You see first an expression in his face of ‘I can go on,’ ” says Firth. “Then he realizes he can’t. I remember him closing his eyes and just trying to gather. One of the things that brings tears to your eyes is the fact that he gets on with it. You start to get very moved by the dignity. It was incredibly painful to watch, but there’s something beautiful there, too.” Once shooting began, Firth fretted over getting the monarch’s stutter just right. “Colin was terribly afraid that he was going to stammer too much, that he was going to misjudge the level of Bertie’s affliction,” says director Tom Hooper (HBO’s John Adams). “I remember pushing him for the stammering to be more violent. I wanted him to be fully in the agony of it.” Firth also consulted his sister, Kate, a speech therapist. “I am quite concerned about how people who actually do stutter are going to take it,” he says. “Any smack of inauthenticity and you’ve lost the battle.”

So far the reception has been excellent for The King’s Speech, which has racked up prizes on the festival circuit (most notably the audience prize at the Toronto Film Festival, previously won by eventual Oscar favorites Precious and Slumdog Millionaire). Firth’s castmates certainly hope that the Academy takes notice of his performance. “They would get it right if they gave it to Colin,” says Rush, a Best Actor winner for 1996’s Shine and a shoo-in for a Supporting Actor nod for The King’s Speech. “A role of this scale, it is like climbing an Everest. And to not do it riddled with showy clichés, but to find a humanity and a depth and a layer that really empowers an audience’s imagination and draws them into something quite complicated? He’s good stuff.”

But Firth—who’s currently filming the spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Gary Oldman—isn’t popping open the champagne just yet. “They say a week is a long time in politics,” Firth “A lot can change in terms of what people’s sentiments are.” He learned that lesson the hard way last year, when Crazy Heart’s Jeff Bridges entered the awards race at the last minute and won every major American acting prize. Firth, who lives in quiet West London with his wife, Livia, and their two young sons (“I’m all about the kids, really—look at the widths of the sidewalks here”), doesn’t foresee his life changing much even if this ends up being his year at the Oscars. “Come end of February,” he says, “whether I’ve been invited to the party or not, I’m still going to be taking out the trash.”

Info courtesy of Entertainment Weekly

Article: "King's Speech' nabs TIFF audience award " by Etan Vlessing (The Hollywood Reporter)

The odds on Colin Firth grabbing the best actor Oscar shortened Sunday as Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" picked up the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Firth was edged out last year at the Academy Awards with his "A Single Man" nomination. But his star turn in the uplifting British drama as King George VI will give Firth bragging rights as the awards season gets underway post-Toronto.

Toronto festival director Piers Handling branded "The King's Speech" one of his "personal favorites" in this year's lineup, and praised the performances of Firth and fellow actors Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush.

"It is a very, very moving story," he said of Hooper's portrait of the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

"The King's Speech" will look to follow a host of TIFF titles like "Precious," "Slumdog Millionaire," "No Country for Old Men," "Crash," and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" that rode goodwill from Toronto with the top audience award trophy to Oscar success.

The 2010 class of Oscar contenders coming out of Toronto also includes Ben Affleck's "The Town," John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole" and past Oscar winners and their latest films, including Darren Aronofky's "Black Swan," starring Natalie Portman, and Danny Boyle's survival film "127 Hours," which stars James Franco. MORE

"Colin Firth and star-studded cast deliver a British history lesson" by Richard Rogers and Vanessa Thorpe (The Guardian)

An American theatrical phenomenon is staking its first claim on London's west end today in a performance in which all of the many actors involved, from Colin Firth to Juliet Stevenson, Sir Ben Kingsley and Sir Ian McKellen, will be happily upstaged by an unlikely rival – British history.

Firth is leading a host of talented names on stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the first British version of The People Speak, a show that aims to breath new life into the past by bringing audiences some of the most significant passages from recorded history.
Stars of the stage and screen will be joined by actresses Kelly Macdonald and Saffron Burrows, poet Benjamin Zephaniah, novelist Arundhati Roy and comedians Omid Djalili and Mark Steel, as Firth tests out the British appetite for a brand that has become as important to popular history in America as the BBC's television series Who Do You Think You Are?

"The People Speak is the perfect response to the abject misery of my history class as a schoolboy," said Firth. "Considering the immense riches that history offers us in terms of the best and worst of human behaviour – corruption, sexual deviation, rebellion and the struggle for power – there is no reason why history should be dry.'
The performance, which will be filmed by the History Channel..MORE

Interview: "Amanda, Colin and the word "Minge"

Amanda Seyfried has a tattoo of the word 'Minge' on her foot because Colin Firth used to say it to make her laugh.

The American actress decided to get the etching - which is a British slang term for vagina - after her 'Mamma Mia!' co-star Colin Firth used the word repeatedly while filming and found it hilarious when she discovered what it meant.

She told Britain's Glamour magazine: "My and my best friend Rachel McDowell, who was in 'Mamma Mia!' with me, have matching tattoos, which say 'Minge'. I've never really been a fan of tattoos, but I wanted to see what it felt like. Rachel has a lot of them.

"Anyway, Colin Firth used to say that word on the set and Rachel had to explain to me what it meant. So it's on my foot. It's to make me laugh, and every time I look at it, I do."

Interview: "Colin Firth First Person Singular" (Filmink Australia)

The March issue of FILMINK is available from February 15th across Australia, but you can buy the magazine now direct by emailing an inquiry to dina@filmink.com.au

This Interview is published thanks to FILMINK,

Australia's best movie magazine.

Interview: "A Single Man" by Simon Jablonski (Dazed Digital)

DD: People are calling this your finest performance yet, how do you feel about that?

Colin Firth: One thing that is satisfying, and a source of great relief, is that I’ve been asked to do a great deal more, the focus is on me more than it’s ever been. It’s much better than people saying, “they put a whole film on Firth’s shoulders and he dropped the ball.” So, in some ways it’s very gratifying. It’s very much in my hands and people like it and get it, so thank God. I only ever feel like I do what’s on the page, and there was a lot on the page this time. I got carried along on a free ride when brilliant people like Nick and Matthew and Julianne show up. Also having a director who has the time and patience to photograph something without me having to be flamboyant about it. I’m not the most demonstrative actor. I do like to try to do what I think people really do which is think their thoughts and feeling without indicating all over the place. And to have a director who has the patience to let it unfold, is not afraid of silence, is not afraid of stillness who doesn’t compulsively editorialise whilst you’re working, who just lets you get on with it and, when necessary, gets the camera close enough to pick up what you’re doing. That suits me and the way I work very well...more

Interview: "Colin Firth and Tom Ford make 'A Single Man' one of their single great achievements " by Carla Hay (The Examiner)

Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the Toronto International Film Festival Press Conference for "A Single Man"


Colin, what’s your favorite color?
Firth: What’s my favorite color? Blue.


And how did it feel pulling the clothing off for your nude scenes?
Firth: [He laughs.] I preferred having it on.
Ford: Are you sure you don’t work for a U.K. paper? That sounds like a U.K. question.

Colin, was it difficult to shoot that scene when George gets the phone call that his lover has died in a car accident?
Firth: I find I can’t answer questions about that scene. I don’t know how it was arrived at. I do it happened the night Barack Obama was elected. It wasn’t the easiest day to be grief-stricken. I don’t know. I don’t remember.


We love to get on the set and kind of get emotionally ready. You go, "I’ve got the tears coming. Roll the camera. Here we are. I’m in the zone now." Roll camera. Cry. Histrionics. Or whatever emotion they’re trying to conjure. What I find difficult — and I remember we had exercises in this when I was a drama student — come into the room in one condition and be in another by the end of it. Something has to happen to change your mood. You can’t pre-prepare the end. So basically, I have to start the phone call happy, get a series of shocks, allow that to percolate, and end it in a state of complete devastation with the camera rolling. Tom let it go on; he let the magazine roll out, I think, for about 11 minutes...more

Interview: Colin Firth triumphs with an extraordinarily unique performance in 'A Single Man' by Carlay Hay (The Examiner)

In a recent New York Times article about you said that Tom Ford called you "fat" before you started filming "A Single Man." What kind of changes to your diet or fitness regime did you make to get in better shape?I didn’t do much change to the diet. I just ate less, I guess. I haven’t actually spoken about what version of that is true. The subtext is definitely the thing, but Tom, if he said that, I filtered it out. I didn’t hear it. 
He tended to handle me with honeyed tones. [He imitates Tom Ford’s voice] "You look great, really great. If you want to get a trainer, he’ll come to your house every day. I’ll pay for it." That means, "You’re fat." Whether Tom remembers literally having said it or having it euphemistically, it’s the same. And I guess he did me a favor: one final push in the war against gravity in my late 40s. It’s probably helpful...more

Interview: "Colin Firth plays against type" by Katherine Monk (Canwest News Service)

Warmth radiating behind a cool exterior is a natural draw and, for Firth, it seems to be a natural state of being, because, at some level, you can tell he doesn't care about all this entertainment business hullabaloo.

Just watching him entertain questions from reporters as he sits quietly - and ever so elegantly - in his deco chair at the Toronto International Film Festival, Firth is the embodiment of alpha male tolerance: He's just rolling with the punches as he greets the non-stop parade of inquisitors more...

Interview:"Complexity of character excites Firth" by David Mermelstein (Variety)

"I was faced with a character who has a fastidious exterior but within that experiences despair, frivolity, laughter, lust, regret, terror, melancholy, serenity -- all in the same day he's experiencing hysterical grief," says the actor. "I don't know how many roles I've had that offer that range of emotion and experience."

"I felt at liberty," he says. "In roles where the writing's not very good, you have to suppress things. It's frustrating playing someone stupider than you, but I had the measure of George: He was smart, and the way he masks his massive despair is poignant. That obsession with external perfection is a sign of panic. He has to control his exterior world because his interior one is chaos. His precision is all desperate measures more....

Interview: "Colin Firth, feeling 'Single' by Tina Daunt (LA Times)

"There was a serenity on the set," Firth said. "I was given the space to engage and to feel it. Tom didn't bombard us with instructions; we weren't given any really. But you knew by the way he said, 'That was great,' if it was or wasn't great.

"The movie is about isolation and the agony of loving someone who isn't there anymore," he said. "It's universal. It doesn't matter what your sexual [orientation] is. Love is love." more....

Interview: "A Single Man" Colin Firth by Ian Freer (Empire)

Interview: "Colin Firth's discomfort in skin-tight spandex for A Christmas Carol animated movie" (Telegraph UK)

"The spandex that we were put in bulges in all the places you don't want it to bulge and resolutely refuses to bulge in the places you want it to bulge," Firth said.

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''

''I tried every form of fruit and vegetable available to me in my trailer, every culinary item, juicers, blenders and I thought 'well no, it's the spandex so it's obviously not me I'm fine,' and then I walk into Jim, hung like a waterbuffalo.''....more

Interview: "Colin Firth on A Christmas Carol" by Simon Brew (Den of Geek)

Do you really hate Christmas?
No, I don't! I've just said [at the press conference for the film] that there's something that happens every Christmas that brings out the Scrooge in everybody! That's fair enough. There's always some person you don't want to hear singing a novelty song in the now increasingly three months leading up to Christmas. Please, never let that be me!

Christmas used to be one special day.
Now it's become three special months! And I'm complicit in that this year! It's only the 3rd of November, and I'm going to be switching the lights on. I have to say, though, how much of a Scrooge do you have to be to not get some thrill of pleasure from switching on the lights on Regent Street. It's fantastic. I know it's early, but hey, Disney need a good run! [laughs]....more

Interview: "A singular man" by Susan Chenery (The Australian)

"LAST time we met you may have noticed me looking at you strangely," the email said when Colin Firth went online one morning. "This is why," continued the email, going on to offer him a lead role in a film.


Trouble was, the email was not from any film director of whom Firth had heard. It was from fashion designer Tom Ford. "I didn't know what to think," Firth admits. "Like everybody else I thought, 'Isn't he to do with the fashion business, eyewear and all that sort of thing?' " Firth's scepticism was not unfounded; panic, in fact, might have been an appropriate response....more

Interview: "Dickens’s Victorian London Goes Digital" by Dave Kehr (NY Times)

“A couple of technicians flew out to Shepperton Studios and started to take data on my face and body,” recalled Colin Firth, who plays Scrooge’s nephew Fred in the new film, “which meant standing in my underwear on a platform while something that looked like a laser beam scanned me up and down. I turned around and there was a kind of a gray, clay figure on a screen of me, with all of the shapes and contours. And then they did something similar with my face. They had me do a million different facial expressions while a camera took pictures of me.


“Then a couple of months later I was in Los Angeles having more stuff like this done,” Mr. Firth continued. “You go into rooms with lenses on every surface of every wall. They give you a heavy spandex suit covered in dots that are read by some sort of beam that shines across the room you are in. This room is not called the set, but ‘the volume.’...more

Interview: "The dashing Mr. Firth" by Marianne Gray (Couriermail Australia)

He speaks Italian - his wife is the Italian documentary producer Livia Giuggioli - knows Italy well and has three children of his own.
"You don't consciously try to equate your own life with your work, but there was a familiarity here, with ideas and feelings about fatherhood, that just resonated when we were doing it.


But talking about his private life is not something you'll catch Firth doing willingly.
"The thought of someone wanting to write about me and my life makes my blood run cold," he says. "Even if an article is brilliantly written, it always feels reductive and surely we all resist being defined. "I would prefer it if you exhumed my life after I've gone." More

Interview: Michael Winterbottom on Genova (FILMINK Australia)

The November issue of FILMINK is available from October 16 across Australia,

 online or by emailing dina@filmink.com.au'.

This Interview is published thanks to FILMINK,

 Australia's best movie magazine.

Interview: Colin Firth masters the art of getting older, wiser and better (The Examiner)

Congratulations on winning the award for best actor at this year’s Venice Film Festival. People seemed to be impressed that you accepted the award in Italian. Your accent was pretty flawless. Did you pick up any tips from your wife on how to speak Italian? [Firth’s wife, Livia Giuggioli, is from Italy.]
No, she hasn’t taught me a damn thing! [He laughs.] I did know [I won the award] a few hours before. Word gets around a little bit. I’m not supposed to say that. The camera wasn’t on me when they announced it, so I didn’t have to do one those [he does a fake surprised expression on his face]. I knew nothing about [which film] won the Golden Lion Award or anybody else’s.
But I didn’t have to fake how I felt. Even when I talk about it now, still, it makes me a little speechless. What I first thought was, "That’s why people cry at the Oscars!" I’d never understood it. I wasn’t about to cry, but I can see why people get their breath taken away. It really is unexpected. It disarms. More

Interview: Colin Firth doesn't always have to play the romantic (Vancouver Sun)

"There are certain times in one's career when you take a role out of necessity. You just need a job. That's a very real concern for almost every actor. But the luxury of being employed on a regular basis is you can afford to, you know, evaluate each project and what it means to you," he says.

"That's not to say I think I've made some shabby choices in the past. It just means I can make a noble choice over a shabby one."

The eyes smile. The mouth does not. More